I have railed against CNBC host Jim Cramer for some time. I enjoy him greatly as an entertainer, and when he focuses on the inner workings of the stock market, I think he does a pretty decent job of educating regular investors as well.

So some jackass reporter decided to ask White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to grade President Obama's performance after a whoppin' 50 days in office. Seriously? You could pass the question off as harmless, silly journalistic tripe, but I think it's symptomatic of a rush to judge and criticize anything and everything Obama is trying to accomplish. It's unhealthy, unproductive and unfair. The time to hand out grades will eventually come, but for now, how about giving the president a break and let him do his job.

I am usually the bearer of such depressing market and economic news, I have to at least give some props when there are some good things to talk about.

This is a fun chart to look at - thanks to http://dshort.com. Assuming this market meltdown proves to be a reasonable fascimilie of the big, bad one, as I believe it will, we have a long way down yet to go.

We are so overdue for a decent-sized short-term relief rally, I think we may get one as soon as next week, but I bet when all is said and done we get much closer to that down 89% total.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

I don't know many very happy people. I know people who are content enough, I suppose. I know plenty of people who do a decent job at hiding their discontent. (As for myself, I'm probably somewhere in between those two categories, leaning toward the former).

Today, I discuss codependent, abusive relationships, and our general resistance to change. Deadman understands the deal. He, too, just wants to relive the good old days and focus on things that will always stay the same, like the Middle East conflict.

Been away all week on business, listening to my colleagues and the talking heads on CNBC bitch and moan about Obama's budget and economic policies. They believe he's declaring war on the wealthy and is going to destroy the economy with his increased tax hikes.

Are you fucking kidding me?!?

Oh yeah, I feel a rant coming on ...

I am going to try and keep this as short as possible because I'm off on a biz trip tomorrow (expect a lot less blog activity from me for about a week) and have things I need to get done before then.

But I just had to comment on the statement released jointly this afternoon by the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), and the Fed.

Loyal readers have been anxiously following dagblog.com's financial troubles in this difficult economy. On Tuesday, after dagblog's appeals for federal assistance were rebuffed, I sadly announced that all the other members of the dagblog team would have to be let go.

I can't stop stewing over the fact that the South Carolina sheriff decided to investigate Michael Phelps' notorious bong hit, with an eye toward possible prosecution.

I know, I know, the sheriff dropped the investigation earlier this week after deciding there wasn't enough evidence to convict Phelps, who wisely did not admit to smoking the funny weed but merely apologized for using 'bad judgment.'

(Video below)

So Obama is signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 into law in Denver this afternoon. I've heard several pundits calling the $787 billion stimulus package the beginning of Obama's New Deal. In today's dagbuzz, I discuss why that comparison is foolish, and why we probably couldn't even afford a new New Deal even if we desperately needed one.

The $789 billion stimulus bill passed today. As expected, the Republican leadership carped about the cost. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell complained, "We've heard a lot from our friends about the danger of deficits over the past few years...Americans are wondering how we’re going to pay for all this." In case this message was too abstract for average Americans, McConnell supported his point with a common sense analogy, "Any parent knows you don't buy a new car and plan the summer vacation before you set the family budget for the year."

The buzz today is focused solely on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's financial stability plan. My quick verdict is that the plan is woefully inadequate on details, and I just don't understand the rush to announce this plan without a more specific framework for implementation.

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, publicly asked the government to raise his taxes in a NYT op-ed today. His position was not that of Warren Buffett, who has argued that taxes are unfairly low for the super rich. Rather, Hastings argued that higher taxes offer a more effective way to limit CEO incomes than pay caps. And he's right. To see why, we need to first understand why CEO salaries have gotten as high as they have.

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You know the recession is getting deep when we are creating interactive Monopoly games mocking it. After all it was the Great Depression which served us up the original top hat, monocle and thimble (or so one dag blogger so falsely convinced me).

It doesn't take much for a bank to make me happy. Give me online access, a good interest rate, a bunch of branches, and I'm all good. Heck, lately I'm just thrilled when my chosen banking institutions don't implode and go boom.

OK, I'm about to reveal - at no charge to you - the secret of success, in all aspects of life.

Pay close attention ... No, that's not the secret, I'm just letting you know you should pay attention because I'm about to reveal the secret.

You ready??? You sure?? Are you sitting down?? Notebook in hand???

Ok, ok, alright already, here it is (commence drum roll)....

------------->>>>>> REJECT REJECTION <<<<<<-------------

In my most recent question column earlier this week, I asked for readers' predictions for the upcoming year ... aside from Genghis bravely predicting that Obama would become POTUS, I didn't get too many responses.

So I'm going to ask for your predictions again, while repeating some of the predictions I made and adding a couple of more, before I revisit some calls I made this year.

It was Sept. 18. Lehman Brothers had just gone belly-up, overwhelmed by toxic mortgages. Bank of America had swallowed Merrill Lynch in a hastily arranged sale. Two days earlier, Mr. Bush had agreed to pump $85 billion into the failing insurance giant American International Group. The president listened as Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, laid out the latest terrifying news: The credit markets, gripped by panic, had frozen overnight, and banks were refusing to lend money. Then his Treasury secretary, Henry M.